It is thus that we have to consider the council as an element in Grecian affairs,—an ancient institution, one amongst many instances of the primitive habit of religious fraternization, but wider and more comprehensive than the rest,—at first, purely religious, then religious and political at once; lastly, more the latter than the former,—highly valuable in the infancy, but unsuited to the maturity of Greece, and called into real working only on rare occasions, when its efficiency happened to fall in with the views of Athens, Thebes, or the king of Macedon. In such special moments it shines with a transient light which affords a partial pretence for the imposing title bestowed on it by Cicero,—“commune Græciæ concilium:”[400] but we should completely misinterpret Grecian history if we regarded it as a federal council, habitually directing or habitually obeyed. Had there existed any such “commune concilium” of tolerable wisdom and patriotism, and had the tendencies of the Hellenic mind been capable of adapting themselves to it, the whole course of later Grecian history would probably have been altered; the Macedonian kings would have remained only as respectable neighbors, borrowing civilization from Greece, and expending their military energies upon Thracians and Illyrians; while united Hellas might even have maintained her own territory against the conquering legions of Rome. [400] Cicero, De Invention. ii. 23. The representation of Dionysius of Halikarnassus (Ant. Rom. iv. 25) overshoots the reality still more. About the common festivals and Amphiktyones of the Hellenic world generally, see Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. sect. 22, 24, 25; also, C. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 11-13.